I bought a bouquet of Asian lilies and other flowers this week at the flower concession in Safeway. I also bought a potted plant with these pretty pink tulips. Click on the image to enlarge.
January 2012
The SOPA/PIPA Issue
I got curious about the SOPA/PIPA copyright issue, so I did a little research and found this nice explanation on The Patriot Post:
SOPA/PIPA Draw Big Opposition
Members of the House and Senate are looking to put the brakes on new Internet anti-piracy legislation that may do more harm than good. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill in the House, and its Senate companion, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), were drawn up to prevent the theft of intellectual property over the web by foreign entities. Both bills have strong backing from Hollywood and other media companies, but there is growing concern that they go too far in enforcing their mandate.
The legislation would give the government unchecked power to shut down domestic websites alleged to have committed or even enabled online piracy. The ability to illegally distribute someone else’s content over the web is a genuine problem, but this legislation would change copyright law so as to hold websites accountable for third-party content posted on their sites through comment forums and the like. Think Facebook or YouTube, and you can understand that these bills are a solution worse than the problem.
In the face of widespread Internet backlash — numerous websites “blacked out” Wednesday in protest — several senators did an about-face. So far this week, 16 Republicans and two Democrats, including seven co-sponsors, announced new opposition. Even the Obama administration expressed reservations.
Sounds like it would seriously screw-up most of us who blog or use on-line social networking. I vote NO, but you know the misrepresentatives in Washington will ignore what I say.
Stately Saguaro
This nice saguaro lives about a mile and a half from our house in the shopping center down by Vulture Mine Road. We went grocery shopping today and I snapped this photo as we were heading out of the parking lot. We love this little town. 🙂 Click on the image to enlarge.
No Limitations
Ramirez makes a subtle comparison between the 2012 O-budget and a credit card consumer making an outrageous request of his creditors.
The President’s 2012 budget proposal contains 43 tax hikes. All of them are utterly unnecessary. They will burden Americans with $1.5 trillion in taxes over the next ten years. He proposed to raise taxes and spending as a higher percentage of GDP in history. This will be a disaster for the economy. It will slow recovery, hurt job creation, will make American companies less competitive, and will burden all of us with higher taxes and, worse yet for seniors, it will increase consumer costs — a real problem for people on fixed incomes.
Sonoran Desert
We made our monthly trip to the Phoenix metro area today to shop in Surprise, Peoria and Glendale, AZ. We had to get some supplies for the yard and garden at Lowe’s and to shop for some hard-to-find-in-Wickenburg food and kitchen items at Smart and Final. I snapped this photo of The Sonoran Desert with craggy mountains in the background as we drove through Morristown on our way home. You can see the BNSF rails that parallel US 60 between Phoenix and Morristown in the foreground. Click on the image to enlarge.
Half Moon Over Casandro Castle
Maybe it’s not exactly a castle, but our little house in Casandro Wash seems just like that to us. Besides, Arizona is a Castle Doctrine State. Click on the image to enlarge.
The View Northeast – The Bradshaw Mountains
We paused along the road a quarter mile north of our new house to take this photo of the Bradshaw Mountains that lie between Wickenburg and Prescott. It was a nice, clear and sunny day today with blue skies and a high temperature of 65 °. Click on the image to enlarge.